Europeana Keynote

My keynote on speed, change, and resilience for the Europeana Annual General Meeting in Lisbon today. (Actually, “keynote” seems so… lofty…It’s more accurately a 10 minute talk from my cold and windy back yard.)

Here’s the text of the talk too (.pdf).

Europeana is Europe’s digital cultural aggregator, providing public access to tens of millions of cultural resources from over 3,000 partner institutions. For as long as I can remember it has been a leader in the global movement to “open up” cultural collections and resources and share them with the world. #allezCulture #Europeana2019

P.S. This link goes to a playlist of two videos.
The first video (“unlisted”, because of copyright) is a compilation/supercut of,

• Marshmello Holds First Ever Fortnite Concert Live at Pleasant Park, 2 February 2019, https://youtu.be/NBsCzN-jfvA

• Jibo, by Al Farmer, 22 September, 2017, https://youtu.be/5BuYgnr5JG0

• Computer-Generated Score or Human Composed Music? Gartner, 24 May 2016, https://youtu.be/qo8B9k10_zA

• UpTown Spot, Boston Dynamics, 16 October 2018, https://youtu.be/kHBcVlqpvZ8

The second video is my short, backyard talk ;)

More links and references, particularly regarding AI and culture, in this presentation, Robot vs. Human: Who Will Win from the VIII St. Petersburg International Cultural Festival, and also in Culture for All, from the Prague Platform for the Future of Cultural Heritage.

“[Lucy] Suchman showed a tape of 2 men failing at making double-sided copies. Xerox executives scoffed at the technological illiteracy of the men until Suchman pointed out that they were both computer scientists, & one was Allen Newell, winner of a Turing Award.”

— What the struggle to automate housework tells us about the limits of the robot revolution, by Ian Leslie, the New Statesman, November 2018

"Our values and yearnings"

“It’s impossible to gaze at the photos of Pluto sent back by the New Horizons spacecraft, and not be awash with wonder at the marvels of nature and the daring behind our choice to explore it. […] It matters not that [New Horizons] is a machine: We made it, which means it embodies our values and yearnings and speaks to our sense of ourselves as fully as any painting or cathedral might. We anthropomorphize the machines, as we should.”

— Steve Pyne, The Meaning of NASA’s New Images of Pluto, The Atlantic, October 10, 2015

Image: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute. Licensed under Public Domain via Creative Commons (link)

Thanks to @DarrenMilligan for the find.